Intracellular Rail Transport

A substance made in one part of a cell may be quickly needed in another part of the cell, or it may have to be sent through the cell to be secreted for use elsewhere in the body. In the case of large cells, simple diffusion is far too slow to meet these intracellular-transport requirements. An example is a motor neuron that must transmit signals to a muscle fibre in the lower leg. That neuron has a projecting extension, the axon, that may be more than a metre (3.3 feet) long, yet the nucleus that contains the DNA encoding all the proteins made in that neuron is at one end. How are the proteins, made in the vicinity of the nucleus, moved efficiently to the rest of the cell?

Microscopy reveals an array of thin fibres aligned in the axon and, in addition, numerous membrane-enclosed vesicles, or organelles, attached to and moving along those fibres, much like railroad cars moving along a track. The fibres are called microtubules. Each is a hollow bundle of 13 strands that are composed of a protein called tubulin. Various organelles, some of which may be filled with proteins or neurotransmitters, move along the microtubule tracks, some in one direction and others in the opposite direction. The tiny “locomotive engines” carrying out this movement are proteins called kinesins and dyneins. Kinesins travel in one direction and dyneins in the other. Directed movement requires energy, which the proteins obtain from the hydrolysis of the energy-currency molecule of the cell, adenosine triphosphate (ATP). During the year, David Hackney of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa., reported new details regarding the interaction of kinesins and microtubules.

To comprehend the scale involved, it is helpful to know that a microtubule is only 25 billionths of a metre (25 nm [nanometres], or about a millionth of an inch) in diameter. Kinesin is 80 nm long, and it moves along the microtubule in steps of 8 nm, using the energy of one ATP molecule per step. The rate of this movement is about 640 nm per second. Hence, the kinesin protein makes 80 steps per second while pulling along its burden. Because there are several kinds of organelles requiring transport and because each must be recognized by, and bound to, its own specific kinesin or dynein, it is not surprising that there are multiple kinesins and dyneins. The kinesin molecule has two globular head groups, which bind to microtubules, and a stalklike tail. It is possible that kinesin pulls itself along the microtubule in hand-over-hand fashion, using its head groups, while the tail remains tethered to the vesicle being transported. The details of that mechanism were among the many unanswered mysteries about intracellular transport to be addressed by future research.

Life Sciences: Year In Review 2002. (2015). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1565678/Life-Sciences-Year-In-Review-2002/228937/Intracellular-Rail-Transport

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